It depends on the size of the player pool I think. Let's take a lower limit where there are 100 players wanting to be able to sit. If only the best player gets to sit and get fish action then there are likely only 3-5 players with a realistic chance of being that best player any time soon. If there are 15 players able to sit with a chance of fish action then there are probably 40-50 players with a realistic chance of getting in the top 15 some time soon so I would expect there to be much more action in the second scenario. On top of that, in the second scenario the best players at a limit are much more incentivised to try to move up since a lot of the action will go on below them. In the first scenario, the best players will be more concerned with locking out the lobby at the limit they are at and moving up will be much rarer.

I don't care about lower limits. People not being able to move up from nl50-200 or 400 won't be good. #1 at nl600 isn't going to be complacent with only sitting nl600. He will definitely be trying to move up and not just focusing on locking down that lobby.

Quote:

In my example I was sitting at multiple limits and someone was sitting with me at all of them at the same time. Also, I have a maximum number of tables I am comfortable with. Clearly adding 1 table on to that will mean I have more than I am comfortable with. It's not so hard to understand. The point I made was that I am willing to play, I just need time to sitout of my other games. I'm not sure why you are demanding absolutely instant games, seems very weird.

If someone who you are beating for 45bb/hr sat you at 3 different tables, you wouldn't be telling him wait I need to quit my other games. Even though the person you're beating for 45bb/hr is someone you will be playing best response vs. If a non-net depositing fish sits you, you need to be able to quit your other games before you give him action. Even though he is a person you'll be playing pseudo-equilibrium vs.

Quote:

No clue why you are asking this/what relevance it has sorry. Also there is clearly a different answer to your question for any different stake level/moment in time.

You're contending that if only the 2 best players can get fish action there will be no battling unless someone tries to move up. This is part of the reason you are against giving the best regular the power he should have. Of course #3-#6 are going to try to knock off the top 2 players if they will not be able to get action otherwise.

You also bring up the point you need to give regs incentive to play each other by letting them get fish action. regs will give action to be able to get these profitable games. Why is it that nobody is starting table/giving action (playing shorthanded in games where they know they are losing) at nl5k+ 6m during the overwhelming majority of peak hours on stars? People who used to complain about other people not starting tables and all the benefits it has just bumhunt nl5k+ and don't give any action. It's arguable the incentive is bigger to give action at 6m games to get profitable games started but nobody does that. Yet you think hunlhe will be different.

For me it's pretty simple. A soft KoTH/table cap cleans up the lobby a little and encourages more action. It doesn't need to be as fewer tables as people are suggesting and could also be adjusted during peak/off peak hours.

Auto-post would also stop people from playing stakes way higher than they normally play in hopes of getting fish at top stakes. If you have the likes of Kanu sitting you at NL10k when u normally play NL600 you are quickly going to stop sitting at the auto post tables. This immediately cleans up the lobby again.

Another advantage of this is that regs can't leave their computers on over night or while they are afk. When looking to join regs on Stars, it's so common for guys to leave tables open which clutters the lobby horribly.

Kaby is absolutely right about fish going broke quicker vs the top tier of regs. You have to remember poker has and always will run around fish.

This is not how a zero sum game works. If the lobby ends up having an effective 10 seats but 30 regs wanted to sit and wait game then it doesn't matter how much the group improves overall or how any individual in that group increases in skill. Only 10 guys will still be able to play (profitably) at a given time.

You're making it sound like everyone can beat the game still if they just do their EV calcs and game theory study enough. It just isn't true, though.

Again take husngs for example this natural selection works very well there and this lobby system has proved to be very effective in terms of sustainability, profit for regs and rake generated for stars. In husngs If you aren't good enough to defend your lobby against attack from another reg who challenges you you either move down to a level where your skill level is close to the regs at that particular stake or you do your best to improve as a player and prove to the player/players who are challenging you that you are not worth playing anymore.

There isn't like like 10 regs in hunsgs controlling all action at all levels on PokerStars. Regs in husngs all share stakes based on skill level. Most regs in husngs if not all don't try to even "control" stakes that are even 1 level beneath their highest stake, most are either too busy defending against new regs trying to move or do not find it worth their time to try and "control" levels below them.

I know this for a fact because although I have played ~80k hands of hu cash this year on PokerStars I also play husngs mainly hu hyper turbos. I play hu hypers up to the $500 level (the 2nd highest level, $1k hyper turbos are the highest) and the $1k regs who would never share a $1k lobby with a $500 reg do share lobbies with $500 regs and the $500 regs who would never share a $500 lobby do share lobbies at the $300 level with $300 regs and so on.

This system works well because regs are constantly jockeying for position and trying to prove themselves. So recreational players aren't always the only players ever playing, a lot of action is generated by regs playing one another and the result is games always running and players not being forced to share a $300 lobby for example with a player who isn't as good as the reg pool up there and should maybe be sitting up to the $100 level. The lobby regulates itself and is given a chance for long term sustainability and as a result more and more players get into the game and is the reason for the increase in popularity and action every year in husngs as opposed to the decline of popularity and action in hu cash every year despite the fact that historically hu cash was a far more popular game.

The bottom line here is that there needs to be an incentive to be good at HU to make people play each other. This benefits the site in rake due to increased action, the regs from having motivation to get better to increase earnings and the fish don't care anyway so wont notice the difference.

For example under the current HU environment you could have literally the best HUNL player in the world stuck at 50nl. None of the other regs at his HU limit will play him yet he still has a 1 in 80 chance of getting the fish that come along. He is just hoping to get lucky and snag a huge whale who can move him up in stakes. Equally you can have someone barely capable of breaking even vs a 50nl hu reg who happens to be wealthy for whatever reason (pre uigea poker,trustfund, business etc) and can sit at multiple stakes from 1000nl to 10000nl on every site/network and only play when the biggest fish come along. Probably earning $300k+ per year.

HU is boring at the moment because there is zero incentive to get better. If anything the guys who do strive to play good players are worse off. They have to go play people possibly better than them and embrace higher variance and swings. For what? To be sat with still a 1 in 80 chance of getting a weaker player to sit?

HU poker at the moment is totally flawed in that unskilled players can just sit at highstakes tables and gain the rewards of the top pros. I couldn't just walk into the Manchester United team tommorow and demand a £120k per week salary so why should i be able to sit at $40000NL and only play gigantic whales?

Lets do the Darwin thing here like every other industry/aspect of life and reward the strongest/most intelligent/hard working. Even if it means i have to move down from 600nl to 100nl or whatever i know it will be good for me in the long term since i'm competitive and will strive to improve my play in the knowledge that greater rewards are to be had.

Wow jamsyms2 post is so amazing, best post I've seen in this thread. Pretty much agree with all points, i dont care if i have to move down 1 or 2 levels. If we can get action and improve then let the best person win.

The bottom line here is that there needs to be an incentive to be good at HU to make people play each other. This benefits the site in rake due to increased action, the regs from having motivation to get better to increase earnings and the fish don't care anyway so wont notice the difference.

For example under the current HU environment you could have literally the best HUNL player in the world stuck at 50nl. None of the other regs at his HU limit will play him yet he still has a 1 in 80 chance of getting the fish that come along. He is just hoping to get lucky and snag a huge whale who can move him up in stakes. Equally you can have someone barely capable of breaking even vs a 50nl hu reg who happens to be wealthy for whatever reason (pre uigea poker,trustfund, business etc) and can sit at multiple stakes from 1000nl to 10000nl on every site/network and only play when the biggest fish come along. Probably earning $300k+ per year.

HU is boring at the moment because there is zero incentive to get better. If anything the guys who do strive to play good players are worse off. They have to go play people possibly better than them and embrace higher variance and swings. For what? To be sat with still a 1 in 80 chance of getting a weaker player to sit?

HU poker at the moment is totally flawed in that unskilled players can just sit at highstakes tables and gain the rewards of the top pros. I couldn't just walk into the Manchester United team tommorow and demand a £120k per week salary so why should i be able to sit at $40000NL and only play gigantic whales?

Lets do the Darwin thing here like every other industry/aspect of life and reward the strongest/most intelligent/hard working. Even if it means i have to move down from 600nl to 100nl or whatever i know it will be good for me in the long term since i'm competitive and will strive to improve my play in the knowledge that greater rewards are to be had.

Ok, I'm not sure if you're arguing for arguments sake a little in parts here but I'm going to have to stop this discussion sorry as I don't think we're getting anywhere. You seem to be misquoting/misrepresenting what I am saying a lot and arguing against points I haven't made as well as going off on a fair few irrelevant tangents. I'll reply to this message and then hopefully other people can read through what we have already said if they want to see our views, I don't think there's much more to say.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh@i'tan

I don't care about lower limits. People not being able to move up from nl50-200 or 400 won't be good. #1 at nl600 isn't going to be complacent with only sitting nl600. He will definitely be trying to move up and not just focusing on locking down that lobby.

So I said: "moving up will be much rarer" in the scenario where only the best player gets to sit. Not "nobody will ever move up". You respond by saying that the #1 player will be trying to move up. Clearly when we have more than 15 people able to sit we will get more than 1 player trying to move up.

If someone who you are beating for 45bb/hr sat you at 3 different tables, you wouldn't be telling him wait I need to quit my other games. Even though the person you're beating for 45bb/hr is someone you will be playing best response vs. If a non-net depositing fish sits you, you need to be able to quit your other games before you give him action. Even though he is a person you'll be playing pseudo-equilibrium vs.

I'm still not sure why you are so desperate to have action absolutely instantly rather than being able to wait a couple of minutes for someone to quit other tables so I don't know why you are arguing here but in your extremely unlikely scenario of a fish deciding to sit you at 3 different stakes at once(!!) then yes obviously I will sit in vs the fish. This will come at the expense of either sitting out before my bb at some 6max tables or playing much worse for a few hands costing me EV. Worth it to 3 table a fish across 3 limits but annoying to play vs a reg who could have waited 2 mins and very annoying in my original example of someone angle shooting to steal table. But this really is a silly argument to be having, I feel trolled to still be talking about it lol.

You're contending that if only the 2 best players can get fish action there will be no battling unless someone tries to move up. This is part of the reason you are against giving the best regular the power he should have. Of course #3-#6 are going to try to knock off the top 2 players if they will not be able to get action otherwise.

No I'm not... "If only the best player gets to sit and get fish action then there are likely only 3-5 players with a realistic chance of being that best player any time soon. If there are 15 players able to sit with a chance of fish action then there are probably 40-50 players with a realistic chance of getting in the top 15 some time soon so I would expect there to be much more action in the second scenario. " Just saying more action in the other scenario.

You also bring up the point you need to give regs incentive to play each other by letting them get fish action. regs will give action to be able to get these profitable games. Why is it that nobody is starting table/giving action (playing shorthanded in games where they know they are losing) at nl5k+ 6m during the overwhelming majority of peak hours on stars? People who used to complain about other people not starting tables and all the benefits it has just bumhunt nl5k+ and don't give any action. It's arguable the incentive is bigger to give action at 6m games to get profitable games started but nobody does that. Yet you think hunlhe will be different.

People do start games at 25/50 with all regs from time to time. The reason that it doesn't happen all the time is probably that people feel it is higher ev for them to just play lower in softer games than it is to start 25/50 games. There are often 10/20 6max tables with regs going when I look, don't know about lower. Anyway, if you are prepared to play regs then I am pretty sure you can get good volume in on stars these days after all their lobby changes. I think things are good at 6max atm. For HU, my solution of a moving table cap would search for the best amount of tables for producing action. If your idea is the best for that then that'll be the table cap more often than not, if not, it won't be.

I guess you were just grinding or w/e while or between writing posts hence the misunderstandings but think that should clear my views up at least, if you don't agree still then I guess we just disagree and there's prob not much more to say. Glgl.

The bottom line here is that there needs to be an incentive to be good at HU to make people play each other. This benefits the site in rake due to increased action, the regs from having motivation to get better to increase earnings and the fish don't care anyway so wont notice the difference.

For example under the current HU environment you could have literally the best HUNL player in the world stuck at 50nl. None of the other regs at his HU limit will play him yet he still has a 1 in 80 chance of getting the fish that come along. He is just hoping to get lucky and snag a huge whale who can move him up in stakes. Equally you can have someone barely capable of breaking even vs a 50nl hu reg who happens to be wealthy for whatever reason (pre uigea poker,trustfund, business etc) and can sit at multiple stakes from 1000nl to 10000nl on every site/network and only play when the biggest fish come along. Probably earning $300k+ per year.

HU is boring at the moment because there is zero incentive to get better. If anything the guys who do strive to play good players are worse off. They have to go play people possibly better than them and embrace higher variance and swings. For what? To be sat with still a 1 in 80 chance of getting a weaker player to sit?

HU poker at the moment is totally flawed in that unskilled players can just sit at highstakes tables and gain the rewards of the top pros. I couldn't just walk into the Manchester United team tommorow and demand a £120k per week salary so why should i be able to sit at $40000NL and only play gigantic whales?

Lets do the Darwin thing here like every other industry/aspect of life and reward the strongest/most intelligent/hard working. Even if it means i have to move down from 600nl to 100nl or whatever i know it will be good for me in the long term since i'm competitive and will strive to improve my play in the knowledge that greater rewards are to be had.

The bottom line here is that there needs to be an incentive to be good at HU to make people play each other. This benefits the site in rake due to increased action, the regs from having motivation to get better to increase earnings and the fish don't care anyway so wont notice the difference.

For example under the current HU environment you could have literally the best HUNL player in the world stuck at 50nl. None of the other regs at his HU limit will play him yet he still has a 1 in 80 chance of getting the fish that come along. He is just hoping to get lucky and snag a huge whale who can move him up in stakes. Equally you can have someone barely capable of breaking even vs a 50nl hu reg who happens to be wealthy for whatever reason (pre uigea poker,trustfund, business etc) and can sit at multiple stakes from 1000nl to 10000nl on every site/network and only play when the biggest fish come along. Probably earning $300k+ per year.

HU is boring at the moment because there is zero incentive to get better. If anything the guys who do strive to play good players are worse off. They have to go play people possibly better than them and embrace higher variance and swings. For what? To be sat with still a 1 in 80 chance of getting a weaker player to sit?

HU poker at the moment is totally flawed in that unskilled players can just sit at highstakes tables and gain the rewards of the top pros. I couldn't just walk into the Manchester United team tommorow and demand a £120k per week salary so why should i be able to sit at $40000NL and only play gigantic whales?

Lets do the Darwin thing here like every other industry/aspect of life and reward the strongest/most intelligent/hard working. Even if it means i have to move down from 600nl to 100nl or whatever i know it will be good for me in the long term since i'm competitive and will strive to improve my play in the knowledge that greater rewards are to be had.

The bottom line here is that there needs to be an incentive to be good at HU to make people play each other. This benefits the site in rake due to increased action, the regs from having motivation to get better to increase earnings and the fish don't care anyway so wont notice the difference.

For example under the current HU environment you could have literally the best HUNL player in the world stuck at 50nl. None of the other regs at his HU limit will play him yet he still has a 1 in 80 chance of getting the fish that come along. He is just hoping to get lucky and snag a huge whale who can move him up in stakes. Equally you can have someone barely capable of breaking even vs a 50nl hu reg who happens to be wealthy for whatever reason (pre uigea poker,trustfund, business etc) and can sit at multiple stakes from 1000nl to 10000nl on every site/network and only play when the biggest fish come along. Probably earning $300k+ per year.

HU is boring at the moment because there is zero incentive to get better. If anything the guys who do strive to play good players are worse off. They have to go play people possibly better than them and embrace higher variance and swings. For what? To be sat with still a 1 in 80 chance of getting a weaker player to sit?

HU poker at the moment is totally flawed in that unskilled players can just sit at highstakes tables and gain the rewards of the top pros. I couldn't just walk into the Manchester United team tommorow and demand a £120k per week salary so why should i be able to sit at $40000NL and only play gigantic whales?

Lets do the Darwin thing here like every other industry/aspect of life and reward the strongest/most intelligent/hard working. Even if it means i have to move down from 600nl to 100nl or whatever i know it will be good for me in the long term since i'm competitive and will strive to improve my play in the knowledge that greater rewards are to be had.

The bottom line here is that there needs to be an incentive to be good at HU to make people play each other. This benefits the site in rake due to increased action, the regs from having motivation to get better to increase earnings and the fish don't care anyway so wont notice the difference.

For example under the current HU environment you could have literally the best HUNL player in the world stuck at 50nl. None of the other regs at his HU limit will play him yet he still has a 1 in 80 chance of getting the fish that come along. He is just hoping to get lucky and snag a huge whale who can move him up in stakes. Equally you can have someone barely capable of breaking even vs a 50nl hu reg who happens to be wealthy for whatever reason (pre uigea poker,trustfund, business etc) and can sit at multiple stakes from 1000nl to 10000nl on every site/network and only play when the biggest fish come along. Probably earning $300k+ per year.

HU is boring at the moment because there is zero incentive to get better. If anything the guys who do strive to play good players are worse off. They have to go play people possibly better than them and embrace higher variance and swings. For what? To be sat with still a 1 in 80 chance of getting a weaker player to sit?

HU poker at the moment is totally flawed in that unskilled players can just sit at highstakes tables and gain the rewards of the top pros. I couldn't just walk into the Manchester United team tommorow and demand a £120k per week salary so why should i be able to sit at $40000NL and only play gigantic whales?

Lets do the Darwin thing here like every other industry/aspect of life and reward the strongest/most intelligent/hard working. Even if it means i have to move down from 600nl to 100nl or whatever i know it will be good for me in the long term since i'm competitive and will strive to improve my play in the knowledge that greater rewards are to be had.

Wow jamsyms2 post is so amazing, best post I've seen in this thread. Pretty much agree with all points, i dont care if i have to move down 1 or 2 levels. If we can get action and improve then let the best person win.

Until rake takes over, or the loss rate for fish is so eyeblinkingly high that they all disappear or until you substitute the word "person" with machine etc. Not convinced one way or the other just rehashing valid points already made itt, and recommend reading or at least acknowledging all sides of the debate.

Kaby is absolutely right about fish going broke quicker vs the top tier of regs. You have to remember poker has and always will run around fish.

+1

I think there are a select few bhunters that will actually win at a higher bb vs fish then say kanu/sauce/jungle would
I really do believe fish will go busto faster plus get bored of playing guys that are so good that can't tilt or even come close to tilting.

Plus if stars are so concerned with how the lobby looks to people can someone come up with 1 positive thing a wait list brings otherwise get rid of that crap already!!!

The bottom line here is that there needs to be an incentive to be good at HU to make people play each other. This benefits the site in rake due to increased action, the regs from having motivation to get better to increase earnings and the fish don't care anyway so wont notice the difference.

For example under the current HU environment you could have literally the best HUNL player in the world stuck at 50nl. None of the other regs at his HU limit will play him yet he still has a 1 in 80 chance of getting the fish that come along. He is just hoping to get lucky and snag a huge whale who can move him up in stakes. Equally you can have someone barely capable of breaking even vs a 50nl hu reg who happens to be wealthy for whatever reason (pre uigea poker,trustfund, business etc) and can sit at multiple stakes from 1000nl to 10000nl on every site/network and only play when the biggest fish come along. Probably earning $300k+ per year.

HU is boring at the moment because there is zero incentive to get better. If anything the guys who do strive to play good players are worse off. They have to go play people possibly better than them and embrace higher variance and swings. For what? To be sat with still a 1 in 80 chance of getting a weaker player to sit?

HU poker at the moment is totally flawed in that unskilled players can just sit at highstakes tables and gain the rewards of the top pros. I couldn't just walk into the Manchester United team tommorow and demand a £120k per week salary so why should i be able to sit at $40000NL and only play gigantic whales?

Lets do the Darwin thing here like every other industry/aspect of life and reward the strongest/most intelligent/hard working. Even if it means i have to move down from 600nl to 100nl or whatever i know it will be good for me in the long term since i'm competitive and will strive to improve my play in the knowledge that greater rewards are to be had.

+1 to minimum # of hands idea, it really addresses what is wrong from the poker room and competition perspectives, without hurting recreational players in any way.

I made the following post 3.5 years ago and I've been posting similar stuff regularly since then. I think it's still relevant today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChicagoRy

You don't need incentive to improve more than the usual incentive in other poker games.

You just need to create a healthy hu cash economy where people are actually playing games.

The problem I have with KOTH, is that it seems to narrow down the available games, perhaps more narrow than the economy of hu cash requires.

That's why I thought a solution of requiring anybody that sits down to play a minimum amount of hands with whoever sits them is a better idea, then the player decides if he wants to sit first, and the players will decide how many tables are open and getting action.

The better players still get unlimited action, but there's no table restriction to prevent the 6-7-8th best players that are online from sitting. It can still be profitable for there to be 10-15 regs sitting hu cash under this policy, when the action dries up the better players will find the weakest reg, and if he can't survive long enough against the superior player, he won't be able to get the same fish action the others that are sitting first will get, as he will be forced to leave the table.

This keeps the regular incentive to improving your game, without restricting the amount of tables in an extreme way.

It also eliminates the "steal a blind and leave" problems people complain about.

The idea that there is going to be top players who never get action is where we differ. I think you're wrong and people will give them lots of action. No way the best regular at stakes <nl5k isn't going to get crazy action. Like I mean we just have completely different views on how its going to play out. Since you're the hu reg I should be giving your opinion more weight. I think you have 0 appreciation for the degenerate gamers though.

I think the idea of potentially 5 people being incentivized to give action in games where they're losing to get a 10% chance at a fish is not going to produce lots of nl10k(or lower) battling. If you mean it's actually 50% and only #1 and #10 are online, if number 10 is playing number 1 they should both get equal shot at fish here, thats way different.

Quote:

If the best and the 10th best players at a limit are both prepared to play anyone then they should have an equal chance of playing against recreational players.

Sharing fish lowers the incentive to be the best though. I'm not sold lower incentive to be the best = more reg on reg action for stars.

re instant action: the thing about getting instant games and why I am harping on it as it stands now I can't get games without having to sit lots of people. This needs to be addressed. Option #1 solves this. #2 doesn't. It's not so much I need a game instantly as much as there needs to be a system in place that make sure I'm getting action when I decide to play (I will be the fish). I would like a system in place that if I get good enough and I'm no longer the fish i'm still getting quick action. Option #1 does this- #2 does not. That's a huge problem.

I think Kanu and a few others have made some excellent points and arguments regarding this hu lobby change. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to write here. I hope that Pokerstars reads your posts with thought. If I was working for Pokerstars and in charge of this thing, I would definitely try to recruit people like Kanu and Kaby as consultants to get this done properly.

Gotta appreciate Pokerstars making this thread and listening to the players. Other sites would just make guesses of what would work best for their business (not understanding that listening to their customers is good for the business).

I don't really understand the points that Sh@itan is making about needing to get instant action (and not the other points either, really). I don't get why it's such a big deal to spend 5 min to look for action (this should do if you are a degen). It's not good for the gaming experience if you are required to be ready for x number of hands anytime you are sat, imo.

Could you not just have no tables open and anyone who wishes to sit automatically goes onto a wait list like table starters and is then automatically paired with an opponent. If either of you quit the table closes and you go back onto the waitlist.

If someone quits their opponent they then have to rejoin at the bottom of the waitlist.

Others have mentioned this in round about ways, but it seems like a very simple system that sets the incentives correctly would be something like this:

In the HU lobby there is a "Create table" button where you can create a table of any stake you want provided that you have raked X (or earned X FPPs at HU) at that stake or higher in the past Y days.

So the people who play a decent amount get empty tables. Those who don't earn FPPs playing playing HU poker do not get to clutter lobbies with more empty tables. This prevents people from absurd bumhunting above their skill level and gives tables to those who play. With this system, there is less room for angle shooting or a small handful of players controlling a stake level for too long. It also gives incentives and opportunities for mid-level regs to battle each other so they can keep their table creating ability. Once they have paid their dues, they have the right to game select for a while.

The only way I could see this being a problem is if two friends want to "play" each other just fold flops over and over to create the rake without actually playing. To prevent this, the X and Y need to be set appropriately. Stars should have plenty of data to determine reasonable limits for this.

If the table creator leaves the table and someone else is sitting there, the person gets kicked off the table unless they already have table creating rights for that stake level.

Others have mentioned this in round about ways, but it seems like a very simple system that sets the incentives correctly would be something like this:

In the HU lobby there is a "Create table" button where you can create a table of any stake you want provided that you have raked X (or earned X FPPs at HU) at that stake or higher in the past Y days.

So the people who play a decent amount get empty tables. Those who don't earn FPPs playing playing HU poker do not get to clutter lobbies with more empty tables. This prevents people from absurd bumhunting above their skill level and gives tables to those who play. With this system, there is less room for angle shooting or a small handful of players controlling a stake level for too long. It also gives incentives and opportunities for mid-level regs to battle each other so they can keep their table creating ability. Once they have paid their dues, they have the right to game select for a while.

The only way I could see this being a problem is if two friends want to "play" each other just fold flops over and over to create the rake without actually playing. To prevent this, the X and Y need to be set appropriately. Stars should have plenty of data to determine reasonable limits for this.

If the table creator leaves the table and someone else is sitting there, the person gets kicked off the table unless they already have table creating rights for that stake level.

In theory this sounds OK but in reality the system would get gamed so hard.
It's not even like you said 'folding flops' because that would be ridic obvious. People would just setup fake matches.

IE. I want a $5000NL HU tab but don't really fancy playing Jungle or Ike so I say to my skype buddy hey lets play X hands of $5k NLHU and just ship back the losses (can be via diff site or skrill/neteller etc so stars dont know). Hey presto we both have the 'rights' to open a $5k HU table for the next week/month etc.

or something. stars could better figure out the right number of each. and it'd be easy to adjust in the future if they were slightly off from ideal.

I think something like this is easily the best option.

The number of tables at the top end is a bit too low i think though.

For instance in this example say the 4 50/100 guys are ike,kanu,sauce,WCG
They would also sit 25/50 so theres only room for 4 other guys.
They would also sit 10/20 and so would the other 4 25/50 guys so there is only room for 4 new 10/20 guys.

For example currently there are these sorts of numbers:

22 50/100
36 25/50
57 10/20
70 5/10
102 3/6
115 2/4
130 1/2

If we chop these numbers down by say 60% to get a healthy competitive HU economy working we're left with numbers like:

9 50/100
14 25/50
22 10/20
28 5/10
40 3/6
46 2/4
52 1/2

This would be a huge improvement on the current situation without being overly extreme as a first step. After a few months using this method it could be tweaked again.

For instance in this example say the 4 50/100 guys are ike,kanu,sauce,WCG
They would also sit 25/50 so theres only room for 4 other guys.
They would also sit 10/20 and so would the other 4 25/50 guys so there is only room for 4 new 10/20 guys.

For example currently there are these sorts of numbers:

22 50/100
36 25/50
57 10/20
70 5/10
102 3/6
115 2/4
130 1/2

If we chop these numbers down by say 60% to get a healthy competitive HU economy working we're left with numbers like:

9 50/100
14 25/50
22 10/20
28 5/10
40 3/6
46 2/4
52 1/2

This would be a huge improvement on the current situation without being overly extreme as a first step. After a few months using this method it could be tweaked again.

-1

I think that option #1 as stated in the op is far superior since it will be self regulating and guarantee the most amount of action possible.